The following Monday morning, Worthy’s breakfast was interrupted by a phone call from Father Fortis.
“Christopher, did I wake you?”
“No, Nick, just finishing breakfast. After that, I’m headed over to see you. I want to hear about Hartunian.”
“Fine, fine, my friend, but did you see the morning paper?”
He stopped chewing. Had something happened when he was up north with Allyson? No, he reasoned, if that had happened he’d have found a message when he got home. “I haven’t opened it yet.”
“I’m truly sorry, my friend. It’s not fair at all, I must say.”
Worthy opened his front door and picked up the paper on the mat before returning to the phone. “Come on, Nick, just spit it out.”
“It’s a small piece. Maybe people won’t read it. By someone named Kenna McCarty.”
Worthy groaned. “What page, Nick?”
“First section, Page twenty-three, left hand side.”
Worthy opened the paper and saw the headline: ANOTHER ROBBERY. VACATION TIME? He leaned against the door frame. Anger mixed with confusion. How’d she know about that?
“Christopher, are you there?”
“Yeah, I see it,” he said as he scanned the small column.
The break-in late Thursday night, early Friday morning at St. Michael’s Catholic Church may have struck many readers as too much of a coincidence. Just two blocks away from St. Cosmas Greek Orthodox Church, where Father Spiro George was found strangled three weeks ago, St. Michael’s also had an altarpiece stolen.
That should send the investigative team off like a pack of bloodhounds, right? Wrong. This reporter learned that Lieutenant Christopher Worthy, in charge of the case, left town only hours later on a family weekend vacation.
Let’s hope the robbers/killers also take weekends off.
“This is my fault, Christopher.”
Worthy found his car keys, leaving his breakfast unfinished. “How do you figure, Nick?”
“She called here yesterday. I happened to be in the office, working with your partner. She asked some questions about the robberies, then wanted to know where she could reach you. And I guess that’s when my big mouth got you in trouble.”
“Forget about that. Are you telling me Henderson was there yesterday?”
“Yes, he sat in the back during liturgy. He asked if he could see me in the afternoon. He wanted to hear what I thought about the case. He’s here this morning, by the way.”
“Doing what?” Worthy said, trying to cradle the phone with his shoulder while he tied his shoes.
“Looking for the missing book. Isn’t that what you told him to do?”
“Not in so many words, Nick, but he’d surprise me no matter what he did. I’ll be there in thirty minutes.”
“Don’t you have to go in to the precinct? I mean, shouldn’t you explain?”
“Not now, I don’t. I’ll leave my boss a message where she can reach me. That writer is just paying me back.”
“For what?”
“For not doing her a favor. Something impossible. Look, I’ll see you soon.”
Worthy’s brain drifted between two questions as he drove through morning traffic. The first was: what’s the worst thing that could happen? Possible answers ranged from Captain Betts bawling him out on the mild end of the scale, to the superintendent butting in, to being dismissed from the case. He imagined Sherrod making an appointment with anyone who would see him before the day was out.
The second question absorbing his attention was: do I wish I hadn’t gone to the cabin with Allyson? Their weekend never recovered after the incident at the restaurant. She’d listened to her headphones the entire way home. But the first part of the weekend was worth it to him. In the old place, the two of them had found an old way of being together. Who knew if he’d somehow destroyed that possibility again, but for the first time since the separation, Allyson and he had been almost together.
As he pulled the car into the church parking lot, he admitted that had he known the society reporter was out to get him, he’d still have left town.
Father Fortis came around his desk to greet him. “I beg your forgiveness, my friend. It’s been eating away at me all morning. And each phone call is salt in the wound.”
“From parish council members, I take it?”
“Others, too. Whoever said newspaper readership is down? Things okay at work?”
“I left a message I’d be in after lunch. My boss will call me here if she decides things can’t wait.”
“What can I say, my friend? It’s just what my abbot has told me for twenty years. A monk who can’t control his tongue is like a serpent.”
“Let it go, Nick. The woman trapped you. How were you to know? Anyway, where’s Henderson?”
“Somewhere in the church. Mrs. Hazelton has decided she quite likes him. She started to call him the eager-beaver type.”
“Oh, does she? I think I should go back to bed and start the day all over again.”
Moving to the window, Father Fortis gave Worthy a puzzled look. “Don’t you want him here?”
“I don’t know. We’re supposed to work together, so I guess this is as close as it’s going to get—same place, same time. That sort of togetherness.”
“Sit down, my friend. The more important question is how was your time with Allyson?”
Worthy dropped into a chair and scratched at his forehead. “Half of it was excellent, half of it terrible.”
“Which came first?”
“Unfortunately, the excellent part.”
“Will you have another chance?”
“We can hope,” Worthy said, fearing how Allyson might react to the story in the newspaper. “Nothing much else to say about it. What happened with Hartunian?”
He listened to Father Fortis’ review of the strange meeting. When Father Fortis asked him at the end if it sounded to him like Hartunian might be a killer, Worthy shrugged his shoulders.
“It sounds more like he wanted your attention. He reminds me of the type who hope they’re suspects.”
“Really? Some people want that?”
“Absolutely. Nothing bothers them more than when we find the real killer. Up to then, they get the satisfaction of looking out their windows to see if their house is being watched. He’ll probably call to see you again.”
“I think you’re right, my friend. And that fits with the way he badgered Father Spiro. So, you definitely believe he couldn’t have done it.”
“I wouldn’t completely rule it out. Attention-seekers live with mountains of frustration. You see, they never get enough, and if Hartunian thought Father Spiro was preventing him getting something he’d set his heart on, like this promotion, then yes, he could have done it. I’ll bet he fantasized about it more than once. So we’ll have that talk with his boss. In fact, it will probably make me look like I’m doing my job.”
“But you are doing your job, Christopher.”
“I’m talking from my boss’ perspective.”
Father Fortis groaned. “If I’d just kept my mouth shut—”
The phone buzzer interrupted them. “Father, Mrs. Theodora Nichols is here to see you. She’s a member of the parish.”
“I didn’t know I had an appointment.”
“She’s come about your note in the newsletter. The one about those who spoke with Father Spiro in the last weeks?”
“Oh? Just a minute.” Father Fortis relayed the message to Worthy. “Would you like to hear this?”
“Why not? That is, if she agrees.” Worthy’s entire world had seemed upside down since his fight with Allyson on Saturday. His daughter seemed as concerned about Henderson as his captain. On top of that, Kenna McCarty probably had the superintendent on the phone right now. Maybe this woman would bring his mind back to the one person who really mattered—Father Spiro.
A short, dark-haired woman in her thirties with a two-year-old in one hand and a canvas bag in the other came into the o
ffice. She smiled tentatively at Father Fortis before stooping to kiss his hand, then peered questioningly at Worthy.
“Please sit down, Mrs. Nichols. May I call you Theodora?”
Mrs. Nichols nodded with a small smile.
“And let me move some chairs back so your son can play on the floor.”
“Thank you, Father. This is Andrew.”
Father Fortis bent down and patted the toddler’s head. “What a beautiful name. It happens to be my middle name as well, at least the English form. Theodora,” he said, straightening up, “this is a friend of mine, Lieutenant Christopher Worthy.”
The woman’s eyes grew large at Worthy’s title. “Are you a policeman?”
“That’s right, Mrs. Nichols. I’m in charge of the investigation.” He wondered how long that would be true.
“Oh, I didn’t realize I’d have to speak to a policeman, Father. I’m not sure my husband would have agreed.”
The two-year-old yanked on Worthy’s pant leg. Worthy reached down to pull gently on the pacifier. “I know what this is,” he said, smiling. The child laughed and sucked harder, having obviously played the game before.
The woman sat on the edge of her chair and rested her hands in her lap. “Bill said I could talk to you, Father, but he said I wasn’t supposed to bother the police.”
“My dear, I’ve known Lieutenant Worthy for some time, and I can assure you that you can trust him with whatever you want to tell me. I assume it’s about Father Spiro.”
She nodded and looked down as the child continued to pull on Worthy’s pant leg. “Andy, do you want some Cheerios and juice?” She opened the bag and put a small plastic bowl and covered cup on the floor next to her. “I’ll clean up what he spills.”
“Don’t even think about it, my dear. Mrs. Hazelton said you’ve come because of my notice in the newsletter.”
“That’s right, Father,” she said, giving Worthy another look. “We got it Saturday in the mail. I thought about speaking to you after church, but … well, I didn’t make it yesterday.”
“I’m just glad you came in this morning.”
“And I promise that if it doesn’t have anything to do with my investigation,” Worthy said, “I’ll completely ignore it.”
“I can’t believe it could have anything to do with Father’s … his death, but then maybe I’m hoping it doesn’t,” she said, tears starting down her cheek.
Father Fortis handed the woman a tissue from a box on his desk. “But I can see it’s important to you, my dear. I assume it’s something you talked about with Father Spiro.”
Both men waited as the woman wiped at her tears. “I came the first time back almost a year ago, in February. I remember it was about St. Valentine’s Day. I just wanted to talk … to talk to someone.” Her hands squeezed the tissue in her lap. “It was about my husband—his work, actually. I could see that something had been bothering him, but he wouldn’t talk about it.”
“Where does he work?” Father Fortis asked.
“Oh, I’m sorry. He teaches physics at Allgemein. He’s in his third year.”
“Oh, a college professor.”
Theodora Nichols grimaced slightly, as if the compliment had somehow hurt her.
“When he finally sat me down to talk about it, I couldn’t make any sense of it. He told me he was having trouble with one of his students, a woman. I immediately thought affair and started to cry.” She looked over at Worthy. “Are you married, Lieutenant?”
Worthy was surprised by the question and stammered a bit as he said he was recently divorced.
“I’m sorry,” Theodora Nichols said, sniffling. “That’s what I imagined was coming for me. I thought Bill was going to tell me he’d fallen in love with this woman. I call her a woman because she’s an older student, not just some girl in her early twenties.”
“But I take it from what you’re saying that that wasn’t the problem,” Father Fortis coaxed.
“No, at least not on his side. He promised me there was nothing romantic. She was one of his students who just began hanging around the department, working on lab projects with him. He said the whole thing started to make him uncomfortable back at the end of the fall semester. I remember really crying then, because that’s when I first noticed the change in him … in us, really. He’d been so happy at Allgemein, so hopeful this was where he belonged.”
“Did he speak to the woman—I mean, to warn her off?” Father Fortis asked.
Mrs. Nichols dabbed at her eyes and nose. “He tried to put up some barriers, like not going into the lab when he saw her in there, but she just showed up at his office hours.”
“Did he talk with his dean?” Worthy asked.
“Oh yes, but that was a disaster. When he asked the dean to remove her from his class, the dean turned everything around on him. He asked Bill what he’d done to encourage her.”
“Not very helpful, my dear.”
“It shook Bill. And then he found out this woman is the wife of an older faculty member, someone in the sociology department, I think. Bill thought the dean was too scared to call her in.”
“And that’s when you came to see Father Spiro?”
“Yes, that was the first time, and he was wonderful. He listened to me, and I probably wasn’t making much sense at the time. I mean, I still wasn’t sure Bill hadn’t done something with this woman. I know it’s not right to distrust your husband, but I couldn’t help wondering.”
The woman’s worry brought Worthy back to the memory of his own face in the bathroom mirror, the night after Susan asked for a separation. Was there another man? Had she found something she’d failed to get from him? But it hadn’t been that for him. Never during the separation or the divorce had he ever sensed there had been another. She just got tired of him.
“Theodora, what did Father Spiro do when you told him this?” Father Fortis asked.
“He took me into the sanctuary, and I knelt in front of the Christ icon. He prayed for my family, for Bill, for Andy and me, and our protection. I cried. He was very good, like a grandfather, really.”
Worthy tried to picture the woman in this office telling her woes to Father Spiro. Could this explain the panicked look in the priest’s eyes when he’d been caught by the photographer? Was this the kind of thing he kept secreted away in the missing book? Lloyd Hartunian didn’t seem the kind of problem the priest would bother to hide. But he might have been more careful with accusations against a college faculty wife. And if so, that raised an old question for him.
“Did Father Spiro seem mentally sound to you, Mrs. Nichols?” he asked.
“Huh?” she said, looking over at him. “Yes, why do you ask? Oh, I know. You’re thinking about what happened on that last Sunday. No, he was fine.”
“And you came to see him again?” Father Fortis asked.
Mrs. Nichols fought down a sob and shook her head. “The woman seemed to know Bill was in a bind. It was as if the dean suspected him, and Bill’s not near to getting tenure. She started leaving him notes. Then by the end of the spring semester, I started getting phone calls at home. The person would just hang up. But I knew who it was.”
“I think if I were in your husband’s shoes, I’d have been pretty scared,” Worthy said.
“Oh, Bill was a basket case until summer arrived. We spent the summer with my folks in Connecticut, and Bill was able to relax. The woman left us alone. But when August arrived, the Bill I’d been so worried about in the spring was back. Even before we came back to Detroit, I’d find him out of bed in the middle of the night, just curled up on the couch. I knew things were bad when just before we came back here, he started talking about applying for other jobs. Jobs in physics are very tight. I mean, there are hundreds of applicants for every opening. And like I said, we both thought Allgemein was wonderful.”
“Tell us about the second visit to see Father Spiro, my dear. When was it?”
“I guess it was in September, maybe early October. Is that important?”
“Maybe not,” Worthy said. “Please go on.”
Mrs. Nichols glanced back at Andrew, who was looking at a cloth book upside down. She offered a weak smile at her son before continuing. “I would have come back to see Father earlier, but Bill freaked out after the first visit. You see, I didn’t tell him beforehand. He said I was weak to come, like when I call my mom every week.”
The two men waited. Finally she went on, “I hope Andy doesn’t remember what I was like during those weeks. I’d sit in the kitchen every day and cry for hours. I thought I was going to go crazy, but I was even more worried about Bill. How can one sick person be allowed to destroy our lives, all we’ve worked for?”
“You hadn’t met this other woman yet?” Worthy asked.
Mrs. Nichols blew her nose. “I still haven’t. I began to wish her dead, though. That’s when I came back to see Father Spiro.”
“And what did he say?” Father Fortis asked.
She gave a brief laugh over her tears. “He told us to screen our calls, not pick up when she called. It was so obvious, but when you’re scared, you don’t think of those things. Then Father Spiro volunteered to talk with the dean.”
“Theodora, do you know if he did that?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, but I don’t think so. I told him Bill wouldn’t like it. Bill can be a bit proud.”
February and then maybe late September, Worthy thought. Father Fortis’ note in the newsletter had specified those who’d spoken to Father Spiro in the two weeks before his death.
“Something went wrong, I take it,” he said. “Something that brought you back to Father Spiro.”
“Yes,” Mrs. Nichols said, rocking back and forth in the chair. “In November—I know it was before Thanksgiving—the woman came into Bill’s office, all matter-of-fact, and asked him to read a draft of her project. He lied and said he had a department meeting in five minutes, but she said that would be enough time.”
Mrs. Nichols put her hand over her mouth and stifled another sob. “At the bottom of the last page she’d written him a note. It said,” she stammered, “it said, ‘I know you’re avoiding me’ and then below that was ‘Would you believe, Bill, that I tried to kill my husband four nights ago?’ Bill said when he looked up from the page, the woman was just staring at him.”
Let the Dead Bury the Dead Page 13